Throughout history, nearly every century has witnessed the exile, persecution, and massacre of the Jewish people. This tragic pattern has hopefully, for the last time, culminated in the 21st century. The massacre led by Hamas that occurred on October 7th, 2023, is widely known to be a debate of morality, justification, and Zionism. Other than the Second World War, it is not widely known by the general public that the Jews have been thrown around, exiled, and martyred for multiple millennia. Please note that this will be a summary of how Jews have endured pain and suffering and is not an in-depth analysis.
In the subsequent text, I will discuss the non-westernised ideological views of the Palestinians. Western media religiously virtue signals, presents one-sided narratives that overlook the origin of anger and hate coming from the Middle East and, most importantly, ignore the fact that ideological ego does not only emanate from the West.
After the death of King Solomon in 931 BC, the United Monarchy was split into the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah. In 722 BC, the Assyrians invaded the Kingdom of Israel.
The remaining population fled to the Kingdom of Judah and its capital, Jerusalem. The Assyrians controlled the region for a century until 612 BC when the Babylonians overthrew the Assyrian empire. In 586 BC, Babylon conquered Judea. King Solomon's temple was demolished, and the Jews were then exiled to Babylon
In 538 BC, Babylon fell to the Persian Achaemenid empire—the new king, Cyrus the Great, decreed freedom to Subjugated nations. The Jews in Babylon returned to Judah, where they rebuilt the city and organised the foundations of Jewish culture with their reconstruction of Solomon's temple and the writing of the Torah, part of the Jewish bible.
Maccabean Revolt: Two centuries later, Alexander the Great of Macedonia made a conquest of the Achaemenid empire. After his success, due to the death of Alexander, the empire was divided among his generals into various Hellenic kingdoms. Following the incorporation of Judea into the Seleucid kingdom in 198 BC, the rupturing relations between the religious and hellinized Jews emerged. This was a time of spiritual struggle as the Jewish populations split. To conclude this revolt, The Seleucid Empire defeated the Ptolemies and took control of all Judea.
Under the reign of King Antiochus IV, the second temple, built on the ruin of Solomons's temple, was desecrated due to the set up of the pagan altar to Zeus. In 165 BC, the religion-driven revolt against the Seleucid empire and the Hellenistic impact on Jewish life had started. The revolt's success led to the establishment of the Jewish independent rule. A century later, the Romans conquered the region in the Hasmonean dynasty, triggering two significant revolts. The Great Revolt from the year 66-73 resulted in the destruction of the Second Temple and the downfall of Jerusalem walls, except for the western wall. The second major revolt from 132-135 led to the massive Jewish depopulation, as 580,000 Jews were slaughtered in battle.
After destroying the second temple in Jerusalem, as explained before, a large part of the Jewish population was either exiled or killed. In the area of present-day Israel, Judea, 25% of the Jewish population was exterminated, and close to 10% was enslaved. They became a minority in their own founding land.
Most fled to Mesopotamia, the modern-day Iraq, and the rest fled to the Mediterranean (Southeastern Spain, southern France, southern Italy, Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey). The Jews began to head north and by the year 300, Jews had become established in Northern France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Bosnia) and northern Africa (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco). 3 million Jews settled into most parts of the Roman empire, except Britain which rarely ever had a large Jewish population until the later years.
By the year 312, Constantine granted the official religion of the Roman Empire to be Christian. Jews began to be treated poorly, their discrimination was written into laws, they were prohibited from intermarrying with Christians, holding high positions in the government. Converting to Judaism was illegal.
The years 700-1200 under the Islamic empire was the golden era for Jews; they were tolerated and accepted under Islamic rule. They were excluded from military service along with Christians and had the right to rule their own court of law. Along with a guarantee of safety for their property, Jews were treated as human beings and flourished as a result of this. The Islamic empire consisted of present day Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Western Russia, Northern Africa, Europe, Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, and the Saudi Arabian Peninsula. As an effect of their integration with the Arab civilization, Jews became the key academics under Islamic rule. Arabs and Jews have mutual respect and live together in peace.
Jews living in feudal Europe during the same time period were prosperous. Pope Gregory I (590-604) the Great forbade the forcible conversion of Jews. Charlemagne (742-814) and Theodoric the Great (454-526) invited Jews to live in their kingdoms. The underlying truth is that this was encouraged for Economic reasons. Due to Christianity forbidding the lending of money with interest, the Jews became the money lenders and were valuable as the merchants and financiers of Christian Europe.
The end of Feudalism became the negative recurrence of the Jews. The church began to become less tolerant of religious freedom, and Jews began to lose their economic roles in society. The Crusades fought to liberate the Holy Land and create a Christian Shrine out of Jerusalem. Many Jews fled east towards the areas of present-day Spain, France, and Germany to Poland and Lithuania.
